Though friends today would never think of me as being shy or afraid to get up in front of people, this is actually very true about me. Once I'm comfortable in a situation, my shyness vanishes and well, I tend to be the life of the party type of person, but initially, I'm shy.
I am extremely unconfortable getting up in front of a group and speaking or doing anything, for that matter, though I try to overcome that as an adult. I don't think I'll ever be wonderful at it, but in a small group situation, I can fake it ok.
But back in 8th grade when everyday can be drama and traumatic situations, was when my most embarrassing moment happened.
I was in school in San Diego, California - Marston Junion High School, to be specific. In gym, which in addition to having to take mandatory showers (which was a whole different type of embarrassing, as I was still wearing undershirts, if I remember correctly and knew that I liked girls and felt like I shouldn't even be in the locker room, let alone in the showers!), one of the class requirements for gym was doing modern dance. Yeah, a lesbian's nightmare!
First, a little background. I was taller than most of the girls at 5'2" and this was my first year at this school, so I didn't have a lot of friends, but had a few. I always felt like I didn't quite fit, between how I looked and also how I felt inside. This was 1971, so being gay wasn't a subject being talked about. In fact, I didn't even know the term or if there was anyone else that felt the way I did, so it just made it that much more uncomfortable and isolating.
Anyway, back to the dancing. oy. During class, they had us learning different moves and that wasn't too bad, as I soon realized that pretty much everyone felt weird about doing this stuff, so there was lots of giggling and pointing at each other. But we were told that at the end of the quarter there would be a dance recital. You could either do a solo dance or you could form a group of 2 or 3 people to perform a dance to any song of your choice.
My stomach turned over many times when I heard this assignment. I knew I would not be doing a solo and a friend named Pam asked if I wanted to do it with her. Pam was Asian and tiny. The height difference had to be about 5 inches between us. She came over to my house to practice and left choosing the song up to me and said that she'd come up with the dance steps.
Being a Beatle's fan, I chose "We Can Work It Out". I'm not sure why that song, other than I liked it and even after we realized how weird the beat of that song was and how the tempo changes during the song, we kept it.
Anytime I told Pam how scared I was going to be to get up in front of all those people and dance, she would "Shush" me and tell me that i was to just look at her and forget that anyone else was there. I was just to pretend we were still in my living room practicing. Our gym class was about 25 girls but that seemed like thousands to me.
The day of the performance, I had no feeling in my body, yet, was so nauseous, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom. My hands were tingling. People were telling me that I was white as a ghost. Gym was right before lunch. (Just thinking about this as I'm writing, I'm able to feel what I felt that day! TERRIBLE!)
Into the locker room I go, where Pam is waiting for me. I tell her that I can't do this. To just do it without me. She laughed and said I would be fine.
Just then, some other girls came in and I heard them saying how many people were out in the gym waiting for the dance show to begin - that all the gym classes were going to be the audience. WHAT?! Oh, no. I crept out there and peeked and sure enough, the gym had not only the 8th grade classes, but the 7th & 9th grades, too!
If I could have left the school and gone home, I woud have.
We all went into the gym and we were given numbers for our order of appearance. We were towards the end. I watched many talented dancers. I watched funny dancers. The dread was literally taking me over. Finally, it was our turn.
I actually felt like I was having an out of body experience. I vaguely remember going out on the floor, taking our positions, trying to focus on Pam. She kept mouthing to me to smile, but I was concentrating too much on not throwing up to smile!
The music began. My feet moved. And somehow we were dancing. And then I just stopped. I couldn't remember anything. I couldn't hear the music. I froze. I looked at Pam, mouthed "I'm sorry." and left. Ran into the locker room. Got dressed (we had been in our gym clothes for the dancing) into my regular clothes and ran out of the gym building and found the nearest bathroom where I sat and tried to pull myself together. I was crying uncontrollably. I knew I'd let Pam down. I had looked like a jerk. In typical junior high drama, I'd built this whole thing up in my mind to be of epic proportions, but it seemed very real to me. Just how foolish I had looked.
Someone came into the bathroom and told me that it really wasn't that bad, that I'd made it thru most of the dance. Everyone had been looking for me. Pam wasn't mad at me. They were all worried about me.
So I ventured into the cafeteria and as I walked in, everyone turned to look at me and just laughed and pointed, as the dancing story (or lack thereof) had apparently preceded me. I was mortified all over again.
I don't know how I made it thru the rest of the day, but as with most things that are deemed traumatic and brutally awful at that age, it remained in my memory, but I got over it. Yeah, I was teased about it by my friends over the next few years, but I survived.
So, that's what I consider my most embarrassing moment.
